The Lord of Time and Invisible Unicorns
by Mind of Ink and Feathers
Summary: Perhaps the Fates were going senile. Perhaps it was just magic. But someone had decided that throwing the thousand-year-old bored man with amnesia once known as Harry Potter in the body of a child was a good idea. And that someone was utterly mad. In which Harry is scarred form many wars and has amnesia. Time Travel Fic. Rated T just to be safe.
1. Prologue: Fate and The Machine

**Disclaimer: Unfortunately, I don't own Harry Potter or any related books, movies, places and ideas. It's all property of the wonderful JK Rowling... Up to this point at least. (Subscribe for updates on world domination plans.)**

* * *

 ** _PROLOGUE_**

 ** _FATE AND THE MACHINE_**

 ** _Log #015085023 - 01100110 01100001 01101100 01110011 01100101 00100000 01100010 01100101 01100111 01101001 01101110 01101110 01101001 01101110 01100111_**

 _Hello there._

 _I probably got the date wrong: nowadays it's seems so hard to keep up with Time, for the unyielding Chronos will never tire and never cease his march. I have only the rhythm of my heart to guide me and even it can no longer cut and hack my days into portions. Ice can only shatter, stone can only brake, none of them can ever move, and such is the case with my heart.._

 _Who am I even talking to?_

 _Yes, you._

 _Maybe you'll prove to be a suitable distraction._

 _Can you hear it?_

 _Seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years … all ticking away slowly, but steadily, right up until you are no more._

 _Your one brief flicker of consciousness in the roaring flame of Time put out._

 _Oh, how I envy you, friend._

 _By the way, can I call you friend? It's just a little word, it no longer holds any meaning for me, really- But I miss saying it._

 _As long as I can remember I've fought and now I stand here victorious._

 _Also so terribly, terribly alone. It's crushing sometimes, but only sometimes._

 _I have the wastelands to watch and rule over and this realm of silence is a rather perfect fit for the king of solitude._

 _Some would say that we won, and the victory for our just cause - and, of course, it's only just our causes that are just- is worth it. There's, of course, a that tiny little problem that everyone who ever sat down and picked up a pen to describe some or other act of heroism; there is no "we" anymore._

 _It's just me now._

 _So, my dearest friend, I ask, did I win?_

* * *

He turned away from the screen, ordering the machine to shut down. The daily logs never managed to help him order his thoughts, despite how much he tried. There were still a mess.

He remembered some things: couple of faces; a couple of funny words, a broom, a sword, a closet, a castle, a house, a stick, a stone and a piece of shimmering cloth, but that was all.

Sometimes, in his dreams, the memories appeared, vivid and full with details from the life he had lost. At the dawn, no matter how much he tried to keep the images and sounds from escaping, he never once managed to hold onto them.

So he continued rambling to the machine every day.

In the end he felt just as empty, just as lonely, just as frustrated, trying to reach and grasp (at the very least) at the outlines of the life he thought was once his.

And, then, one day, when the flickering number announced that this one was going to be his log #01508600, darkness, thick and greasy, engulfed him.

And then Harry James Potter was once more.

Later he didn't know whether to curse or praise what happened that day.

But one thing he knew: he was going to have the time of his life.

Perhaps the Fates were going senile.

Perhaps there was only one god and his name was absurdity.

Perhaps it was just magic.

But, in any case, someone had decided that throwing a thousand-year-old bored man with amnesia who had lived through ten world wars in the body of a child was a good idea.

And that someone was most definitely at the very least utterly mad.

* * *

 **A/N: English isn't my native language, so if you happen to stumble across any grammatical or other errors of mine, please, feel free to point my attention to them. Any other reasonable criticism is welcomed. Nonetheless, I hope you enjoyed it.**


	2. Memories and Sounds

**Disclaimer: I have a chemistry test to study for, an uncomfortable chair, and, when I open my wallet, a lonely dazed moth flies out, so… Yeah, I'm not JK Rowling and I still don't own Harry Potter.**

* * *

 _ **CHAPTER ONE**_

 _ **MEMORIES AND SOUNDS**_

He remembered. For once he remembered something.

* * *

 _First came the sound: the clashing, the shouting, the cackling, the screeching, the panting, the mad deafening beating of his own hearth that seemed to be trying to jump out of its owner's ribcage, to tear through flesh and bone without mercy._

 _Then for a few torturous seconds everything stopped before returning. It was just his breathing and heartbeat this time, slower, somehow heavier, and pained._

 _Then came the images, blurry and distorted. And then… Then was the feeling._

 _Many others would have cried out. He didn't._

 _Blood, thick and dark, seemed to be everywhere. He was lying in blood. His blood. Others' blood. It was slowly dripping down the stone steps. The light sand in the base of the stairs was soaked in bright red; a sacrifice to the cruel god who has sent them all there to fight and die in a futile war._

 _He tried to move, causing strong sharp pain ran through his entire body._

 _Perhaps that was his end._

 _What came next was a loud crack, the faint sound of a wand quickly being drawn, and a few sure steps towards him. For a moment he thought he would have to fight even in his last minutes in this world, but the voice he heard was not one of an enemy._

" _YOU! You immature, irresponsible, insufferable utter idiot! How DARE you put your life in danger!?"_

 _The angry worried voice was unexpected. He started laughing, as loud and clear as he could, his broken ribs aching terribly, his breath coming out in short troubled pants. It didn't matter. Just then and there he could laugh himself to oblivion._

 _And so he laughed, multi-coloured spots appearing in his blurry vision. He felt to familiar hands grabbing onto his collar just before darkness claimed him and his defected consciousness slipped away from his weak grasp._

* * *

And the greasy darkness embraced him once more.

Awesome wasn't just cool, it was terror and it was wonder, it was the knees-buckling, chest-tightening, fearful encounters with the radically Other, with what was grand and crushing. And if he'd ever heard anything truly awesome, what followed was most definitely it.

It was an all-mighty and all-encompassing sound like someone had ripped through the very fabric of space and time and sawn the pieces back together in an unrecognisable form. It made him feel impossibly small, it made him feel watched, and controlled, and weak, like a pawn on a game board with trillions of figures, like a grain of dust inside a giant's eye.

Innumerable memories were crashing through, breaking through all of his mental defences with the sheer brute force of their numbers. One after the other, quicker and quicker, the million hours of a forgotten life flooded his mind. They were far more than even he could hope to untangle for now, but they were nevertheless there. Soon enough he would find his way through them.

He just needed a little time. And time he always had.

Just not quite right now.

Something tugged on Harry Potter and dragged him far, far away to another place and another time.

* * *

Profanities she would never admit to know swam around her head as her gaze settled on the form of her five-year-old nephew lying on the kitchen floor, a great bloody gash on the left temple of his head.

Petunia Dursley didn't want _that_. Whatever her feelings for her sister were, she did not wish to see Lily's son dead.

"Vernon!" the word, full with shock, escaped her mouth. She looked at her husband, who stood still just next to her, a bloodied frying pan in his hand, his lips slowly beginning to form a silent word.

She didn't wait for him to do or say something. Instead she ran for the phone, ignoring Dudley's current tantrum, thoughts madly racing in her head.

* * *

He hurt, that was for sure, but this wasn't anything new.

His thoughts were all sluggish, never quite formed. He didn't feel at home in his own mind and this was new.

He opened his eyes, reluctantly letting the ruckus, weird smells and bright images of the outside world penetrate his bubble of isolation.

A blond woman and a faceless man in a white called stared back at him, waiting for something to happen.

The man certainly had a face, there was no doubt about that. It was just that the white coat probably meant the stranger was a doctor and he had long ago stopped paying attention to their faces. Soldiers, civilians in war zones, physicians and their patients; he never allowed himself to truly see them, to remember their faces, it made it easier for swallow if – no, when – they died. Maybe this had saved him some suffering over the years.

It was a selfish act, but in the end he didn't feel sorry.

In the end he didn't feel anything.

He tried to focus on focus on the woman, but, he realised, his eyesight was rather lacking in quality. The gloved, smelling of disinfectant hand of the doctor reached out and put on his face a pair of bulky glasses. Vision finally cleared, he could make out the woman's worried expression.

He tried to dig through his memory only to find jumbled chaos. He could not navigate through it. Not yet.

"Do you remember anything? Do you remember- Do you know who you are?"

A name emerged on the surface of the roaring ocean that was his thoughts.

 _Harry James Potter_.

But names didn't actually mean anything. He didn't know who he was, no matter what label, what fundamentally meaningless sequence of letters was assigned to him, so he gave them the truth.

"No."

The woman's next expression was weird, he could not read it. Or, perhaps, he had forgotten how to.

Everything about faces was weird: the way it ever so slightly reflected light"; the many lines, big and small; every curve… He hadn't seen an actual face for so long and something in it made him inexplicably happy.

He leapt from the hospital bed into the woman's arms. For all he cared, he could be hugging his greatest enemy. It didn't matter. She was close and she was a human; the first one he had seen in centuries.

Petunia Dursley stood there, frozen and confused, for a second and then pulled the boy in an embrace.

* * *

 ** _Log #01109001 – 00000000_**

 _Tick tock._

 _Here we go round the prickly pear at the dawn of a new ending._

 _Who am I?_

What _am I?_

 _Are you even still listening?_

 _No, you're not. I can understand._

 _Sometimes I'm not entirely sure whether even I am listening anymore._

 _But I know something and I think I might just be enough to keep me going…_

 _I'm back._

 _Whoever I am, whatever I am, wherever I am, whenever I am, I'm back._

 _And I remember._

* * *

 **A/N:** **Again, constructive criticism really would be appreciated.**

 **Also... Can we just pretend that the Dursleys (Petunia at least) aren't two-dimensional cartoonish villains?**

 **Because, you know, most people aren't.**


	3. The Author of All

**Disclaimer: Blah Blah Blah I don't own Harry Potter and I'm running out of original ways to say this on my third try. That's not good.**

* * *

 ** _CHAPTER TWO_**

 ** _THE AUTHOR OF ALL_**

"Amnesia? Will he recover?"

"Maybe. Memories often return as brain tissue heals, but we can't guarantee anything. Hopefully, there isn't any other damage, but we must monitor him for a while."

Petunia Dursley nodded absently, lost in planning. She had held onto a grudge and allowed it to control her for far too long. Maybe what happened was for the better. She could turn a new page in her life.

* * *

Time was measured by others now. Clocks he had no control over cut his time into pieces, dictating when he slept and when he ate. There were decades he had to go through, millions of puzzle pieces he had to piece together to form a coherent picture, he didn't have the time to be constrained by the hands of the doctor's watch.

The further he went back, the more difficult it became making out the anything but random details. Why would he ever need to know what breakfast he had had on some random day in April when he was twenty?

Human brains were stupid, his brain was stupid, the world was stupid and the damned clocks with their ever-present ticking was stupid. So stupid that, in fact, he didn't care whether he'd reverted back to the dictionary of a three-year-old just to describe how stupid everything was.

No one knew why suddenly all clocks in the facility, both digital and mechanical, had started going haywire.

* * *

It was over quickly. That afternoon the police cars came and carried away Vernon Dursley, that same afternoon Petunia decided she didn't need such big house for herself and the boys.

Staring at the living room, strangely empty without the gigantic man sprawled on the couch, she sighed.

She was the one wanting to turn a new page after all, it was not her right to complain.

Everything seemed strangely clear in her mind that afternoon. She would miss that clarity sorely, when the weight of the situation in all of its complexity was finally realised.

* * *

In the office of Albus Percifal Wulfic Brian Dumbledore a silver instrument buzzed and let out four puffs of red smoke. Unfortunately, the portraits of former headmasters were still asleep (and fulfilling their dream of not having hundreds of the little screaming monsters known throughout the universe as "students" disturb them), thus a senile old hat was left being the only observer.

* * *

Under the dying light of seven suns the Author of All's quill was ever so quick to spill its ink onto a new page. Both new and old words, written in a language that was itself both new and old, filled the pages.

From its perch a silvery owl quietly watched, her eyes endless abysses of black and dark violet. Mortals new her under many names. She was the trembling whisper in a tent in a dark forest, the tales of humble beginnings and tragic ends, the legends that welded together people into a nation.

She was Story.

"Don't you think quills are a bit old-fashioned?" Story finally spoke.

"I'm old," the Author murmured. "Time is old. History is old. You are old."

"But they change. I change"

"Stop nagging me about being conservative and having to get those fountain pen thingies-"

"Uh, fountain pens are _so_ old-"

"Typewriters, whatever!"

"Typewriters? You know that the digital age is already starting, right!? Are you _serious_?" the owl rolled her eyes.

"No, I'm not a double star system. That certainly would make storing paper harder."

"Sirius jokes stopped being funny so long ago."

"Whatever. Fate isn't going to write itself. Those idiotic Fates are always busy knitting socks and not helping at all."

"So… Are you going to get a computer? Its's efficient."

"I can make my own decisions! I've never been wrong-"

"Except when that one time most of Europe died, and one time most of America died, and that one time when the whole world almost died, and that one time you made a typo and then-"

"SHUT. UP."

The Author flung his hands with ferocity and knocked over the inkwell. Story winced, watching ink as black as night spill over the paper and soak deep into it, through thin pages.

"We will have to rewrite the whole thing now", said the Author, his voice trembling. His epic tale of prophecy and triumph was ruined. "But it all has already happened."

"Mess around with time."

"But the Fates-"

"The Fates are busy knitting; they won't notice a change if you dress it as a pink elephant and get it to perform a suggestive dance right in front of them."

"But the story-"

"If you haven't forgotten, I _am_ the story, I am _all_ stories. I know what I'm doing, old man"

Then suddenly Story froze and looked at him smirking in triumph (if owls could smirk).

"Will you get a computer now?"

"I hate you."

* * *

 **A/N: Constructive criticism would _really_ be appreciated... wink wink nudge nudge.**

 **I won't hold chapters hostage though. The burden of irregular updating is entirely on my laziness and crushing inability to manage my time.**


	4. Benevolent Puppet Masters

**Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter and you know it. The only reason I'm writing this is because otherwise the number of the chapter is out of centre and it really grinds my gears.**

 **I could simply not write them, of course, but noooo. It's a matter of principles, damn it!**

* * *

 ** _CHAPTER THREE_**

 ** _BENEVOLENT PUPPET MASTERS_**

Beyond time and space as we know it there are seven suns, caught in a gentle never-ending waltz, that illuminate hundreds of planets. From here all that has ever fascinated human kind commenced.

Among these many dancing planets and stars was born the stuff of legends and wonder, of myth and history, of revolution and greatness.

Among these stars was born Magic.

And on the surface of each of these worlds there's an Author.

But there always has been just one Story and she was rather fond of a certain Mr. Harry James Potter. Unfortunately for the aforementioned notable wizard, being Story's favourite was often not a great thing.

* * *

The ferocious clicking on the keyboard was thunderous, strangely reminiscent of machine gun fire. Story was perched on the Author's shoulder and watched the writing process with unblinking eyes.

"Call him here," said Story. "Some explaining is in order."

"But- There's no point in trying to argue with you, now, is there?"

"You learn quickly," Story smirked.

The Author pulled away an inkwell and a dip pen form his bottomless pockets and gave the sheet of paper, full with tiny standardized letters, a look filled with sympathy.

"This is going to look awful," he murmured and spilled the contents of the tiny glass jar onto the paper.

* * *

Albus Dumbledore looked at his office. There was something just a little bit off, something out of place, but he could not quite pin it down. The portraits haven't noticed anything unusual, he'd made sure to ask them.

The old man sighed and ran his hand through his white hair. He could tolerate not knowing something (although just barely so), but he found not knowing what he didn't know incredibly exasperating, for the Headmaster feasted on knowledge.  
Behind his desk the Sorting Hat smiled as Dumbledore exited the room.

* * *

The apartment in London was a murky place in horrible need of cleaning, but that wasn't anything she couldn't manage. It had three bedrooms and that was the most important thing. The broker, despite his hyperactive persona which Petunia found abnormal and thus rather unpleasant, had done a good job.

A week later it was more or less clean and they had moved in.

Light creamy colours had quickly replaced the dark blue of the ancient wallpaper. It seemed like a different place now. The Sun peaked through the curtain and grains of dust floated in the air, bathed in the golden rays. It would take a while to get rid of the massive amounts of dust.

Dudley sat on the empty floor, surrounded by labelled cardboard boxes and mashing the buttons of his controller, eyes locked on the bright images on the screen. Petunia was leaning on the wall next to the window, nursing a cup of coffee and staring at the leather-bound album in her hand.

She had forgotten about it until she dug it out of the chaos of some dusty box. It was an old thing, worn and raggedy, certainly not very well looked after from the days before the wizarding world had taken Lily away from her older sister. From its pages her family and a younger version of herself looked at her grinning.

Petunia looked at her son just a few metres way from her. He had shouted and thrown tantrums for full three days before he either grew tired of them or realised their futility. It hurt her to think what she had allowed her dear boy to turn into. Dudley was spoiled, used to the world acting as a wish-granting factory at the expense of his cousin. She wondered whether it was her immense hate for Lily's boy that made her allow this to continue for so long just to create a more obvious contrast.

Would Lily have treated Petunia's offspring in such a horrible way?

She looked at the smiling girl with hair like fire and eyes like forest moss in the picture. The answer was obvious.

Lying in a bed way too big for her slender figure, Petunia Dursley cried herself to sleep that night, an old album lying open on the nightstand.

* * *

Harry Potter sat silent in the car. The horse-faced blond woman – Aunt Petunia, he remembered – kept giving him worried looks every few minutes as if expecting him to jump off the car, lightings shooting off his body, their heat liquefying the asphalt (or whatever 5-years-olds with amnesia were supposed to do in situations like this).

And in that particular moment to the man in a body of a child it really seemed that jumping off the car would be the right thing to do. This last night another vivid memory had came to plague him.

In the future, around World War Four (it was curious how hamnkind never seemed to get enough of those) he had helped create a thing of nightmares. Neither he nor his peers had could have predicted what they would discover. Following the theories of a young physics prodigy, they had forged with magic what was assumed to be a portal to parallel universes.

He never knew whether their assumptions proved to be correct. He only knew that the men who stepped on the other side of the portal returned form there no longer the same: their eyes would have a mad glint in them and would dart around erratically, never settling on a single object even for a second; their whole bodies would tremble; they would sweat and shiver; when asked what has happened, they would only hiss and sputter.

Time would pass and they would recover enough to be thrown in another military experiment – which, from the point of view of the Grand Command, was the only thing that mattered – but they would never be the same. They would scarcely speak and their memory would be fuzzy. Whatever was it that they saw in the portal, it made the most filled with agony memories float to the top while everything else became foggy, vague.

What the portal did was worse than any Dementors, for there was no patronus charm to banish the effects.

Perhaps the worst part was the young man barely out of his teen years who stood behind the theory. When information of the portal was finally leaked, Dr. Xandar van der Turm seemed no less broken that the unfortunate testing subjects who had gone through the portal. He had committed suicide not long after that, blaming himself for all the suffering.

It had never been Van der Turm's fault, of course. It was Harry who had supervised the project and helped in creating the portal. Even if all his other sins could be forgiven – and they couldn't - this was enough to make him a monster. And, yet, once he had been supposed to be this benevolent noble hero to banish all darkness?

Even worse, the time in which he was thought to be the hero was right now.

He chuckled. Aunt Petunia threw him a curious glance and a hint of smile appeared on her lips; she probably thought it was a good sigh her nephew had stopped moping in the backseat.

Oh, blessed were the ignorant.

* * *

 **A/N: Just to remind you, I'd welcome criticism.**


	5. Suffering Wrapped in Absurdity

**Disclaimer: I've lost my mind, my characters have lost their minds and now we can happily go on a never-ending tea party with a rabbit. Ergo, I'm probably not JK Rowling and I certainly don't own Harry Potter or anything related.**

* * *

 ** _CHAPTER FOUR_**

 ** _SUFFERING WRAPPED IN ABSURDITY_**

 ** _Log #08000101_**

 _Good. I'm just talking to myself. Not such a huge surprise, now, is it?_

 _Let's just pretend this isn't happening, alright?_

 _I'm sane, I'm fine, I'm normal. This is real. You, my friend, are real._

 _Life is cruel and life is ridiculous._

 _Life is suffering wrapped in absurdity._

 _And if you live long enough, if you see enough of the terribleness of a human caught in the vicious hunt of another human, enough of fate's ruthlessness and the universe's indifference, you will inevitably learn to not see the suffering._

 _All that's left is absurdity, you see, and thus you laugh._

 _Amidst the ashes of fallen civilization, amidst the blood of fallen comrades and foes, all that's left for you is to laugh at the sheer absurdity of it._

 _And, of course, you laugh._

* * *

Ink seeped through the pages, ink soaked into the porous rough wood of the desk, ink dripped onto the cold stone floors, forming a puddle so black that it seemed to be devour all light around it.

The Author of All looked miserable.

Story looked intrigued.

"What now?" she asked.

"We wait… I suppose."

"For how long?"

"I don't know. We just wait."

"You don't know. _You don't know_ ," Story emphasised every world, her glare of deep intelligent violent digging deep into him.

"Hey! I don't do this often! And you are the one who made me do it in the first place!"

"You had one job!" Story shrieked. "You had one job, Carl!"

The Author looked at her, blinking rapidly, cogs turning in his head, but unable to quite process the words.

"Seriously, now?"

The bird smiled innocently at him.

"Yep."

"The memes and- You know, you're so immature."

"Yep."

"Also insane."

"Why, thank you!"

* * *

The next thing Harry saw was the darkness. It surrounded, it overwhelmed, and it suffocated. For a fraction of a second the darkness was All.

Then he found himself in an overstuffed armchair. A silver owl was looking at him from its perch with some sort of odd satisfaction. Bright golden rays entered through a window on his left and the light glinted off the bird's metallic feathers. Behind her, in a high chair reminiscent of a throne, sat a strange man covered with random blotches of dark ink, bent over a think old tome, his brow furrowed in deep concentration.

The light first attracted his attention. It was strange, different than anything he had seen, almost multi-coloured, but still looking mostly pure white. Behind the window, he could see three – no, scratch that, four suns hanging in the mauve sky. He leaned back and saw a fifth one just above the horizon.

Then the owl decided to drive his attention away from the peculiar site that was the sky. It spoke with a mighty, grand voice that echoed in the vast chamber.

"Welcome to the Home of Magic, welcome to the fortress that keeps the chain of unbroken and the sword of the Silent King unclaimed. We joyfully welcome thee, Harry James Potter, in these sacred hallways. We greet you and we swear an oath of good intention, oh, Boy-Who-Lived, Chosen One, Master of Death, Heir of Myrddin's Testament, last of Avalon's Guardians, Destroyer of the Directive, admiral of the Fleet of Old Earth, bearer of Humanity's Burden-"

"Yeah, right, hi."

Alright, a talking melodramatic owl. No surprise there, it wasn't like anything around him had ever made any sense anyway.

"Just that?" the avian seemed disappointed.

"Yeah," Harry nodded, then he thought about how overly dramatic meetings that were usually more befitting for theatre than real life usually went in his experience. "Should I have brought a fancy hat?"

"That would have been rather nice of you, actually-"

"OF COURSE NOT! That would have ruined the narrative!" the man behind the desk yelled and suddenly stood up from his chair, somehow causing the massive thing to topple over with a loud crash. "No hats! No one must wear hats! Otherwise your hair won't be ruffled by howling winds!"

The man stood still for a couple of seconds, a thoughtful frown forming on his face. Then he turned towards Harry, a tad embarrassed.

"Um, sorry about that. My train of thought derailed for a second. Hello, I'm the Author of All, by the way."

Cogs turned in Harry's head until something click. There was something oddly familiar in the man's features, especially in the twinkling eyes.

"You," he spat.

"Ooooh, that's getting interesting! Can someone bring me some popcorn?"

The Author glared at Story.

* * *

The delicate silver instruments were placed behind clear glass screens. They buzzed and beeped, spun wildly and whirled with the grace of a ballerina, flashed and let out puffs of multi-coloured smoke.

The tall wizard leaned over them, his beard tucked inside the many folds of his bright robes, his expression thoughtful.

All seemed well with young Harry. An injury was detected a fortnight ago, but it seemed like nothing too serious. After all, children run and played around, inevitably sometimes hurting themselves in the process. Lily's protections seemed to be still in place, although their location had shifted ever so slightly. Dumbledore chose to ignore this; his inventions, although he would never out loud, were far from flawless.

But there was something much, much bigger going on.

The Cube.

In the last few days he had found himself fascinated by the web of fine clockwork mechanism made out of old heavy gold enclosed in a cube of clear quartz that stood on the same shelf as many of his other instruments. It could have been compared to a clock, had it not been for the remarkable delicacy and complexity of its design and its sheer age.

It was an ancient thing, it had been ancient even at the time Hogwarts was built. Someone had brought the Cube to England around the fall of Rome. Some legends claimed it was made a millennia further back, when the Eternal City was still a dream in the minds of Romulus and Remus. Older, stranger myths, preserved through half-forgotten runes and ancient tongues used only for rituals by few old-fashioned cultures, said it was even older and chose to date it back to Atlantis, even to the dawn of Time itself. In any case, the device could not have been the work of an ordinary human.

And something was going on with it.

He knew at least that, but for Albus Dumbledore its secrets were far beyond his vast knowledge. Even Nicolas Flamel, with his centuries worth of knowledge of the deepest secrets of Magic, saw only a mystery wrapped in an enigma when he encountered it.

The Headmaster glanced at the Sorting Hat, solemn and unmoving on its dusty shelf. It had looked into the minds of the most brilliant men and women in history; now only wizards and witches, but in a peculiar turn of events many Muggle philosophers and scientists had agreed to place it on their head upon their last breaths. Alas, this practice had ceased with the Stature of Secrecy, but, still, the Hat was the probably the greatest store of knowledge in Earth. If any force in existence, could decipher the ancient device's messages, the Headmaster thought, it had to be it.

"I need your help, old friend."

"My vow is to serve the school, not help those who happen to dwell within this office in their pointless projects. You must know this, Albus."

"Whatever is happening, it may be a threat to the school… Something great must be happening right under our noses, we have to know!"

"Really?" the Hat let out a dry chuckle. "I don't _have to_ do anything and I'm pretty sure I don't happen to have a nose."

"But it may-"

"Yes, Albus, it _may_. And when it does – _if_ it does – I will stand beside you and help you as much as I can, whatever the predicament we'll found ourselves in will be. But I will not base my actions on probabilities and speculations, even if they happen to be the ones of the Headmaster."

"But-"

The Hat sighed. It was a deep, sound full with tiredness that somehow carried the smell of old leather and parchment with it.

"Albus, I do not truly think that even I would be able to help you in understanding the Cube's secrets. I'm sorry. I won't let you be consumed by a riddle with no answer and I certainly won't let myself be dragged down the rabbit hole with you."

"Something terrible might be happening! How could you just stand on that shelf doing nothing about it!?"

"I'm old, I'm tired, and I've learned to recognise which battles can be won. Do not forget that even you are a child in my eyes. You were such an ambitious, promising boy… Great plans, great abilities, you'd never give up your goals or your principles, not voluntarily, not if the gods didn't reach out from the skies to strike the few places where it would hurt you. Stubborn you were and stubborn you are. For once, don't blindly chase a goal that may be just an illusion."

The Hat and the Headmaster were locked in a silent battle of wills for a minute at too. Then Dumbledore sighed and stormed out of the office, mumbling something. From his place on his perch, Fawkes followed his figure with sad eyes. Then again, all things that lived long enough tended to have a queer kind of sorrow in their gaze.

The Hat giggled. It so rarely stumbled across true mysteries nowadays.

* * *

The features of the man who had called himself the Author of All were remarkably similar the ones of a younger and beardless Dumbledore. He even wore the thrice damned trademark half-moon glasses!

Harry didn't much like the man he'd once perceived the closest thing he had ever had to a grandfather. The former (or current; time travel was confusing) Headmaster's intentions had always been god and pure, but, then again, the path to Hell was paved with good intentions. After going through the greatest hells man could create on Earth and returning, one tended to be more than a bit nervous around benevolent puppet masters.

The Author looked back at him, seemingly confused.

"Um… Do we happen to know each other somehow? Did I pick the wrong Harry Potter?"

"The wrong Harry Potter? What, do I have a whole bunch of clones stored in some mad scientist's basement without my knowledge?" he snorted. "But- So you don't have anything to do with Dumbledore?"

"You decided to project yourself into the story again, now, didn't you?" Story asked exasperated, rolling her eyes. "I'm working with an amateur!"

"What exactly is the problem with that!?"

"What's the problem!? Yeah, okay, because there obviously isn't a problem in making the figure of the infallible mentor and main plot device look like you! Tasteless, that's what it is!"

"That's just details!"

"Details make great stories great, details waste great premises and save bad ones! Of all the people in the Universe, how exactly did you seem qualified to be an Author?" Story shrieked.

"Um, wait, excuse me, could you explain, please, what exactly is going on?"

Story threw a meaningful glance at the Author, warning him to not interrupt her and cleared her throat.

The voice that came next was certainly different. Harry remembered the hollow, echoing voice of Death that sounded like two tectonic plates crashing into each other, like mountains eroding and turning into seabeds in mere seconds instead of eons. It was the only thing he could possibly compare Story's voice to, but, truly, this was an awful comparison. Hers had the same grandness and sense of eternity to it, like it was the only constant in an ever-changing universe.

It was the rustling of old pages, carrying the scent of vanilla and old leather, it was the cursive writing of a skilled calligrapher, it was the whispering of thousands of angels, of lost libraries and ideas that were not yet born. It was song and dance, sound and motion, dreams and lullabies.

The words the voice carried were nothing special by themselves, far from it, but they didn't really matter. Harry's hearth opened, ready to let the whole world, the entire magnificent narrative of life in it. He was engulfed by the words and the worlds they had created.

"Cause and effect are tied together throughout the universe in a grand narrative, in a symphony that would make humans being weep with both pure ecstasy and sorrow, if they were able to perceive anything's true meaning through the narrow opening in the cave they've closed themselves in. The relationship of cause and effect is tangled, complicated, in ways far less intuitive than the mortal men in their endless false self-confidence would like to admit. Effect can exist without a cause, and cause does not necessarily lead to anything."

"Everything's is part of a little story. Time does not measure the speed of cause and effect, it measures the flow of the story in its broader context. But one story can exist in infinite forms, one story can also be rewritten."

"The edifice you've found yourself in, Harry Potter, is not seen by many of your kind. It is not seen by many humans, full stop. Here stories are born and protected, here the fabric of space and time is kept from being torn apart, here is the source of your magic and of all the ideas that created technology to oppose it. It's information that we produce here."

"As I said stories can be rewritten. Time's reset, but you stayed the same. Play the game as you see. I am Story. I can't condemn your actions, but I can't bless them either. I can't meddle, but, due to the unusual circumstances that lead to this discussion, the Fates can't either. You're the lord of your story, now."

"My story is absurd. It has always been absurd."

"Well, make it absurd then," Story grinned, her voice back to normal. "I like absurd."

The Author snorted. Neither of the two paid him any attention.

"So, I'm the Lord of Absurdity, now."

"Yep."

"The Lord of Pink Invisible Unicorns."

"Yep."

"The Lord if the Teapots Orbiting Around Saturn."

"Yep. Make sure to leave a couple of teabags there just in case some metaphysical Englishman decides to make an unexpected trip."

"Yes. Otherwise it would be so very impolite of me."

"And we most certainly can't allow such improper behaviour."

Story looked ecstatic, the Author of All looked like he wanted to throw himself on a pyre and Harry Potter laughed as laughed as loud as his lungs would allow him.

Which wasn't much. Being melodramatic in the body of a five-year-old was very uncomfortable.

* * *

 **A/N: All criticism or any other form of feedback is, as always, appreciated.**

 **Also, for all interested, if Death is ever featured in this mediocre at best literally work of mine, it will bear rather huge resemblance to Discworld Death. Because, obviously, Terry Pratchett's Death is the best...**

 **Wait. What.**


	6. Cleansed in Fire

**Disclaimer: The writer of a following collection of miscellaneous creations that could be mistaken for literature does not own Harry Potter, any deposits of calcium or dignity. Obviously.**

* * *

 _ **CHAPTER FIVE**_

 ** _CLEANSED_** _ **IN FIRE**_

Stories were wild creatures. It wasn't known why they behaved in the manner so characteristic of them; maybe it was because people were so random, maybe it was because the Fates weren't the best of weavers despite being in the business for millennia (or perhaps because of it), maybe it was because Story was utterly stark raving mad.

Actually, it was probably the latter, really.

Whatever the cause, the effect was clear; stories seemed to have a mind of their own and thus all Authors in their centuries long quest to fill a shelf of Eternity's Library were forced by circumstance to develop a queer sort of intuition.

Now something was tingling in the back of the Author's mind, making him beyond nervous.

It simply didn't make sense.

It was just too easy, but Story rarely made it easy. She mocked the broken and kicked the fallen mercilessly. Despite their good intentions the Fates didn't seem interested in stopping her. The world was her canvas and she painted between the black lines drawn by Destiny with blood, for such was her nature. Such was Nature's nature, as Story so adamantly liked to remind him.

Something suddenly dawned on the Author.

His eyes wide with shock, he gazed at Story.

"No, no, no, you didn't."

"I didn't do what exactly?"

"Y-y-you… That would be terrible. You didn't. You couldn't have!"

Story blinked at him innocently

"Oh, come on, you're just being paranoid right now."

"I'm sure you did something."

"Oh, you silly… Back to work."

* * *

Tom Marvolo Riddle stood up, still too wobbly on his feet for his liking. There was no grace, no majesty in the crude motions he was forced to move his newly acquired body. Alas, not befitting for an evil overlord at all.

Pure contempt written all across his young noble features, he glanced at the blond woman lying on the floor, clutching an old little book in her delicate pale hands.

Weak. Weak and silly woman. One would think one could expect more from a Black. All things considered, her weakness was his strengths, so he had no reason to complain.

A blond man with sharp aristocratic features who seemed to be somewhere in his early thirties rushed in the room, a wand raised high in his hand.

Ah, here came dear Abraxas's son.

"Imperio", Tom muttered.

He sighed as the opposing mind gave in easily. It was as if it was entirely unwilling to even try fighting. So pitiful and boring… So very disappointing.

An old man with familiar features looked at him from one of the many paintings with great surprise. It lasted for a mere moment, before the mask of cold indifference was once again in place and the man nodded with respect.

"My lord," he greeted.

"Useless."

"My lord-"

The man form the portrait didn't finish his sentence. It was pretty hard to do so among the fiery inferno that quickly consumed the canvas.

Weak. All of them were so weak.

* * *

Harry frowned at the septagram surrounded by web of runes he had drawn on the wooden floor.

Then he gave into a coughing fit.

Bloody thrice damned chalk!

The piece of red chalk erupted into bright orange flames.

The fire alarm shrieked and screamed.

 _Note to self_ _: Don't curse objects – even mentally – that you've just used in a ritual._

* * *

Secluded in a corner of the library, a solemn teenager sat underneath a stained glass windows, his nose buried in an old record book from the small town's archives. A little red book and a copy of a queer newspaper form four year ago were hidden deep inside his jacket's inner pocket.

His dark eyes suddenly stopped on a line in the middle of a random page. He had found what he was looking for.

It was time to correct some mistakes born out of weakness.

Harry Potter had to go away, that was clear. Whether he was a potential threat before that fateful night or not, he certainly was now. The boy would grow up wanting to destroy Tom and that would be such a terrible inconvenience.

* * *

Two people stood on the opposite side of the street, standing right on top of the roof, invisible to the whole world. A well-trained eye could perhaps catch a brief shimmer in the air, but in situations such as this no one looked upwards.

The cold morning air carried the heavy intoxicant smell of power.

And smoke.

Mostly smoke.

The bright flames that seemed to take animal-like forms – a mere visual illusion, as everyone would later convince themselves – as they rapidly consumed the nondescript buildings.

The neighbors had exited on the street. Some called the fire brigade, others tried to help, most just stood there transfixed by the disaster in front of them. It didn't truly matter. Nothing in their power could stop the inferno now, the damage could not be reversed.

It was too late.

Tom Riddle looked down at the blond boy next to him.

"These people there… They were weak and a threat. They would go against me someday; I could not allow them to do so."

The boy swallowed nervously.

"You owe those who went against you no mercy, Draco," Tom continued. "I won't give mercy, you shouldn't either. Don't be weak."

Draco Malfoy felt afraid, jittery under the unmoving cold gaze. Nevertheless, he nodded, surprising the urge to look away from the unnerving pale face of the young man; he felt this wouldn't be encouraged.

The house at 4 Privet Drive was burning and in the distance sirens were shrieking.

It was too late, everyone could see that.

"Watch," commanded Tom's voice.

Draco obeyed.

* * *

 **A/N: I think that calcium burned in orange, and I think that chalk was a compound of calcium… So, there you go, I teach you stuff. You can now be a little bit more convinced by yourself when you say you haven't just wasted your time staring at a screen.**

 **Lesson's over, kids! Next week we'll learn how to make explosives out of the chewed gum under the desks and a half-eaten pencil! Bring a kilo of sodium!**


End file.
